


her face is a map of the world

by 26stars



Series: AU August 2020 [3]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU August, Cadet Melinda May, Gen, Role Reversal AU, SHIELD Academy Era, Veteran Agent Morse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25687855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: The legendary Agent Bobbi Morse is coming to SHIELD Academy for a speaking engagement this weekend. Melinda May is going to be needing an S.O. soon, and she doesn't want to miss her shot.For AU August day 3: Role Reversal AU
Relationships: Melinda May & Bobbi Morse
Series: AU August 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860802
Comments: 18
Kudos: 25
Collections: AOS AU August 2020, Women of the MCU





	her face is a map of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Florchis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Florchis/gifts).



Melinda May is twenty years old and two years into her time at SHIELD Academy when she gets her first glimpse of the woman everyone refers to as the Mockingbird. Bobbi Morse is a seasoned Level-7 agent, just returned from a long-term undercover op in the USSR, and her arrival back at the Operations Academy to give a presentation about it has been the biggest thing to happen since Carter herself spoke at the Dean’s retirement dinner last year. The cadets in May’s class have been pooling stories all week, collecting scuttlebutt to construct a surely larger-than-life character that is sure to make the woman’s arrival feel like a letdown.

“I heard she took out Gorbachev’s third-in-command.”

“No, she was infiltrating the Russian mafia.”

“Which was probably ten times harder than the Italian mafia—she did that when she was still a cadet just for fun.”

“Heard she’s already tapped for a Deputy Director position whenever she wants it.”

“Heard you can throw a dart at a map and she can speak the local dialect of any place it lands on.”

“Heard she’s slept with more world leaders than SHIELD agents.”

“Heard she’s scouting our class while she’s here.”

The last one is really the only one May cares about. None of the agents in her class, including herself, even have badges yet. It’ll be two more years still before they’ll each be paired off to a Supervising Officer, but it never hurts to start networking in advance. Who wouldn’t want to train under the Mockingbird herself?

Her class is doing hand-to-hand combat drills in one of the indoor training centers when May glances up at the elevated track and glimpses a flash of blonde hair heading away from her. For a moment, she scolds herself that _not every blonde is the legendary Mockingbird_ , but then the runner rounds a corner back towards the area where her class is, and May realizes that she was right. From May’s vantage point two stories below, Bobbi Morse might as well be a statue in the Parthenon, equally revered and unattainable.

May takes a blow to her shins rather than her sparring pads for her distraction, but it’s well worth it. Even if Morse isn’t watching them, May puts everything she has into her drills for the rest of class. Couldn’t hurt.

Morse has left the track before May’s class ends, so she foregoes the showers after the bell in the vain hope of chasing down the blonde before she gets too far away. Melinda has already searched the entire building by the time she jogs out to the lawn, looking wildly around for a blonde ponytail disappearing around some corner.

_Go figure. As if spies don’t know how to avoid being followed…_

So she’s nearly floored to arrive at her afternoon class and find Morse sitting at the front of the room next to her teacher’s desk, smiling casually at the cadets as they file in. May is barely breathing as she slides into a desk near the front, briefly locking eyes with the woman, who seems to be studying each student in turn as they enter. The eight seconds that the blonde is looking at her don’t feel nearly long enough, but May is still thrilled. She bites her lip to hold back a grin— _don’t want to act too desperate_ …

Her teacher gets to his feet the second the class’s start time arrives.

“Good afternoon everyone. This is Agent Bobbi Morse, though I’m sure all of you knew that. Agent Morse, why don’t you introduce yourself, and then tell us what you already know about everyone in this room.”

Turns out, she knows a lot. Morse is modest with her own introduction, but then she calls out individual students to stand up, then more or less reads them their background files. Many of the facts she rattles off are surely on paper somewhere, but then Morse goes on to explain how she can identify someone’s background just by reading their body language, posture, speech patterns, expressions, reactions, accent… If espionage didn’t pan out, she could certainly make a living doing a sideshow like this.

“Every single one of you wants to be a good agent someday,” Morse says when she’s done impressing them. “Being able to read people in front of you is a skill you’ll hone with time, not a skill I can teach you in a single class. Today though, I’m going to teach you how to adjust everything I’m watching so that you can’t be read quite so easily.”

The professor wisely dismisses Agent Morse a few minutes before he dismisses the cadets, admitting that he’s doing it so that she can get a head start and not be mobbed by students when she leaves. It doesn’t stop May from, at the bell, sprinting out of the classroom and into the stairwell, following her gut that tells her to go _up_ and not _down_.

And there she is, perched on a step two flights up hunched over a steno pad, chewing gum and twirling a pen in one hand.

“Nice hunch, rookie,” Morse says, looking up as Melinda rounds the landing and faces her fully from eight steps down. Once again, the woman’s gaze is disarming, and Melinda can’t get her words working quickly enough.

“Figured I’d wait until you all had left the building, but you’re not going to rat me out, are you, Cadet May?” Morse blows a bubble with her gum, and Melinda slowly shakes her head, watching her every move.

“You were pretty good in your hand-to-hand combat class this morning. But you’ve got that leg up because you did gymnastics and MMA when you were younger, right?”

Startled but not really surprised at this point to hear her past simply read to her, May nods. “The only time that class is a little bit of a challenge is when I have to spar with the instructors,” May says, trying to set herself apart without being too much of a brat about it. “Most of my classmates write me off because of my size and that makes sparring with them a cakewalk.”

“I can imagine.” Morse hasn’t stopped staring hard at her yet. “Pennsylvania, right? Let me hear some of your Chinese.”

May rattles off the first sentence that comes to mind and the blonde smiles in response.

“Thank you,” she says in perfect Chinese, “you’re quite cute yourself. And is one of your parents from Shanghai?”

May nods. “My mom,” she says in English.

Morse nods, scribbling something on her pad and then flipping it closed. “Well,” she says, getting to her feet, “I’m going to go eat something up in the faculty cafeteria, unless you sell me out and send the mob after me, Miss May.”

“No,” May promises quickly. “I won’t.”

“Thank you,” the blonde smiles again as she turns and starts climbing the stairs. “See you at the presentation tomorrow.”

The auditorium is packed when Morse gives her speech the next evening. May and her classmates are relegated to the nosebleed section, but she is still on the edge of her seat the whole time. Morse talks like she’s seen everything, which can’t possibly be true, but even the older directors down in the front rows are nodding along as she speaks. Melinda hangs on every word the woman says, and when it’s all over, she stands forever in line for the mic during the Q&A time. When it’s finally her turn, she takes a deep breath, unprepared for the feeling of having the woman’s full attention once again.

“What’s the most important thing a cadet can do before she graduates?”

On the stage, she sees Agent Morse just barely smirk.

“Do one thing every day that scares you. Then by the time you’re on the field, you’ll already have the most important experience.”

Cadets aren’t allowed at the reception for Agent Morse after the speech, so Melinda joins her class as they crash the boiler-room bar that evening, dishing about the speech and continuing to speculate about the legendary agent. When it’s past midnight and time to head back to the dorms, Melinda trudges up the stairs and stumbles sleepily to her room. She falls straight into her bed as soon as she’s got her shoes off, but even in her sleep-addled state, she registers something papery beneath her cheek on her pillow. Squirming off of it, she finds a slip of paper that she is confused enough about to flip on the painful light to read.

_Keep being bold. I’ll see you in a couple of years. -Bobbi_

It might just be good wishes, but it feels personal enough to be a promise, and Melinda falls asleep smiling.


End file.
